IF we are ever going to close the gap on indigenous disadvantage, the Forrest review must be taken seriously, an Aboriginal MP says.

AAP AND PETER LAW

AAPAugust 3, 20148:29pm

IF Australia is ever going to close the gap on indigenous disadvantage, the Forrest review must be taken seriously, said an Aboriginal MP.

Ken Wyatt told the Garma indigenous festival in Arnhem Land that he was sick and tired of seeing government report after report that resulted in no changes for indigenous communities.

He said recommendations shouldn’t be cherry-picked from Andrew Forrest’s report, released last week.

“This report gives us a chance to set aside the political bickering, to look at an approach that reforms what’s happening in Aboriginal affairs,” he said.

“I get tired of going to meetings with organisations, walking out into a community after being told everything is being met in the way of targets, and I see families that live in poverty still; nothing for some of these families has changed since 1972.”

In his review of indigenous employment, the mining magnate proposes a welfare card for a host of government payments, introducing income management to 2.5 million people.

He wants certain products, including alcohol and cigarettes, to be banned on the card.

Mr Wyatt said even in capital cities Aboriginal people are living at levels of disparity and dysfunction that is inappropriate and unacceptable.

“It doesn’t matter whether Twiggy Forrest wrote it or not, it still catches some historical thoughts that were put forward by indigenous leaders, and it still captures what is still a gap right across every (indigenous) community, except for that proportion of our population who have good incomes and stand on their own feet,” he said.

Senator Nova Peris said she was disheartened when she recently went into a supermarket in Alice Springs to see a queue of Aboriginal people lined up at the single teller that took the Basics Card, while the other tellers were populated by non-indigenous shoppers.

“The NT have been recipients of horrible systems and policy by government that have just been thrown upon us,” she said.

She said Aboriginal people were immensely frustrated when good programs were implemented and then a change of government swept them out the door, and she urged for community consultation on the Forrest recommendations that took into account the views of community leaders that know which programs are successful.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said the Healthy Welfare Card proposed by Mr Forrest that would extend income management to all welfare recipients barring pensioners and veterans could not discriminate between indigenous and non-indigenous citizens. “The vast majority of Australians who receive payments are managing their finances, raising their kids, organising their lives, and they have the right to be treated with dignity and respect in the conduct of their private lives and they don’t need this heavy hand,” he told reporters today.

FORREST FIRES BACK AT SHORTEN

Mr Forrest said his recommendation for a Healthy Welfare Care was specifically for vulnerable Australians, not all 2.6 million welfare recipients.

As part of his blueprint to end indigenous disadvantage, card users would be blocked from spending welfare payments on alcohol and gambling.

Speaking from the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land, Mr Forrest told The Sunday Times last night he had received a “strong reaction” to his review.

“There’s big concern up here that the Government may not implement (the recommendations),” he said. “I think the Government is quite enthusiastic about it.

Mr Shorten this week described the proposal as a “bridge too far”, saying his party would not “stigmatise everyone who receives a government payment”.

“It’s an utterly ridiculous comment,” Mr Forrest said, adding: “This is a normal debit card which gives you full access to all your payments.

“However, if you are in a community which is suffering from severe drug addiction, alcoholism, then you can go on, as a community, on to the card and have a much healthier community.”

He said “one or two hard choices” needed to be taken, but the card could be applied “easily and inexpensively” in communities.

“It is not meant to be applied to all receivers, as one politician was heard to say, of government payments. That’s just ridiculous, they are certainly not all vulnerable,” he said.

“I’m talking about Bill Shorten, who is a good man and has actually given me, with Jenny Macklin, three conditions for bilateral support and I believe I’ve faithfully met those three conditions.

“All I’d ask is that before anybody criticises the card, remember that we’re ending the disparity, we’re not fiddling around with politics.

“Read just a couple of pages of the section and then learn that the card is for vulnerable Australians to help them through a difficult spot, get off addictions, get away from the primary factors which cause devastation in communities.”

Mr Forrest said he did not have a target for when agreement would be reached with federal and state governments to implement his 27 recommendations.

But he said the cost of business as usual would be “tens of billions of dollars and countless lives”.